Free Republic

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon traded jeans and a light brown sweater for a khaki green prison uniform – and a once promising political career for a serial number on Tuesday. At his sentencing last month, his attorneys asked a federal judge to allow the felon to spend his birthday and the coming holidays with his wife and children in Charlotte. Instead, Cannon kicked off his 44-month sentence just before noon Tuesday. Cannon entered prison when he stepped out of a black SUV in front of Federal Correctional Institution Morgantown and checked in with the guards. He was...

In the wake of two federal court rulings striking down West Virginia’s marriage protection amendment, which had previously defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, the state tax department has announced starting next year, it will remove the words “husband” and “wife” from all tax forms and informational materials, replacing them with the more gender-neutral “spouse.” Until then, the agency says same-sex couples can use the current tax forms with the understanding that a married household may have two “husbands” or two “wives” under the new definition of marriage in the state. According to a notice...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The former CEO who oversaw the West Virginia mine that exploded in 2010, killing 29 people, was indicted Thursday on federal charges related to a mine safety investigation that followed the blast.

Documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) from the Department of Justice provide "hard evidence" that former Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) should have been prosecuted after NLPC exposed his questionable financial dealings, and triggered a Justice Department investigation. CREW executive director Melanie Sloantold Politico yesterday, "It was clear the Justice Department should have indicted Mollohan." Mollohan was defeated for re-election in 2010 in a Democratic primary. His ethics woes were a key issue in the campaign. Although we have not yet had the opportunity to study the underlying documents, CREW has released a very concise...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Mark Maynard owns a used car lot, runs a towing business and spends his spare time on a professional drag racing pit crew. And despite not raising a dime for his Republican campaign and agreeing with his Democratic opponent on almost all the issues, he defeated West Virginia's longest-sitting state senator.The same momentum helped Republicans win a U.S. Senate seat held for decades by a Democrat, sweep three congressional seats and take majorities in the Legislature for the first time in eight decades. "Everybody's low approval rating of the president and the way he was running...

Mark Maynard owns a used car lot, runs a towing business and spends his spare time on a professional drag racing pit crew. And despite not raising a dime for his Republican campaign, he defeated West Virginia's longest-sitting state senator. That was the kind of election it was for West Virginia Democrats. As voters took out their disgust with President Barack Obama, Maynard defeated Sen. Truman Chafin, a lawmaker Republicans previously had bothered to challenge only once in three decades. Not a single campaign check came Maynard's way, nor did he report spending anything. Potential donors told Maynard he didn't...

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

Dems Realize “War on Coal” Cost Them Coal Country by Daniel Greenfield People are funny that way. They cling to their bibles and guns. And then if you declare war on them, they don’t want to vote for you. Coal-heavy districts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois that had been steadily moving away from Democrats in recent elections appear to have completed that shift Tuesday, when they overwhelmingly backed Republicans who vowed to oppose what they call President Barack Obama’s “war on coal.”In West Virginia, once a long-time Democratic stronghold, Republicans will take control of both houses of the state...

In the wake of Tuesday’s drubbing, soft Democrats in Congress are pledging to stand with the president’s party… for now. So-called independent Sen. Angus King (I-ME) backed off his pledge to caucus with the majority party in the 114th Congress on Wednesday. He was joined by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who represents a state which is shifting rapidly from blue to red without the requisite stopover into purple territory. The story is not the same on the state-level. As the fallout from the 2014 tsunami settles, a wave of party jumpers is sapping the Democrats of authority on the...

18-year-old Saira Blair, a Republican from West Virginia, just became the youngest elected lawmaker in the country after trouncing her 44-year-old Democratic opponent 63 percent to 30 percent to earn a seat in West Virginia’s House of Delegates.

Radical liberal feminism — the kind that likes abortion on demand and taxpayer-funded birth control — has been rejected at the polls. Or, at least, it’s been a really rough week, or so. And I’m not just talking about the fact that Sen.-elect Cory Gardner effectively pushed back on the “war on women” narrative by defeating Colorado’s ”Mark Uterus.”The story also played out in Texas, where — writing about the race — Mollie Hemingway observed: “Wendy Davis was the face of ‘War On Women’ Politics. How’d that go?” And it played out in California, where Sandra Fluke lost a bid for...

Saira has caused quite a storm in the media! She shocked everyone, when at just 18, she was elected to represent her district in the West Virginia House of Delegates. Here are five things to know about the youngest lawmaker in America! Saira Blair may be 18, but she’s already proven to be the strongest candidate to represent a small district in West Virginia. The young Republican, who did most of her campaigning out of her college dorm room, defeated 44-year-old attorney Layne Diehl in a landslide victory on Nov. 4. Here are five fascinating facts about Saira! Saira Blair:...

This could be the nicest thing you read today, via the Wall Street Journal: A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday. Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote. In a statement, Ms. Blair thanked her supporters and family, as well as her opponents for running...

The state with the smallest share of Latinos in the nation has elected its first Latino congressional representative, Alex Mooney. Mooney, a conservative Republican, ran against Nick Casey, a former chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party. Mooney beat Casey with 46.7 to 44.2 percent of the vote, with 96 percent of precincts reporting. After his victory, Mooney tweeted: "I cannot thank you enough for this humbling opportunity to serve the people of West Virginia." Latinos make up just 1.2 percent – or slightly more than 22,268 – of the Eastern Panhandle state's population. Mooney, 43, ruffled feathers with his...

Demonize coal. Keep the poor in the dark. And, above all, keep pushing the fantasy that U.S. government action (with or without the approval of Congress) is essential to dealing with climate change. That — in a nutshell — is the climate-change strategy of the Obama administration and its environmentalist allies. Evidence of the third point can be found by looking at the “Clean Power Plan” — the 645-page set of rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last June that, if it withstands legal challenges, will effectively outlaw the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States....

Senator Daniel Hall has left the Democratic Party, flipping the West Virginia Legislature entirely into the hands of the GOP, according to a source in the state's Republican Party office. The party affiliation change comes after a deadlock in the state Senate where Republicans and Democrats each had 17 members as a result of Tuesday's election. The switch was first reported by The Charleston Daily Mail. Hall served in the West Virginia House of Delegates from 2008 to 2012. In 2006, he unsuccessfully ran for the House of Delegates as a Republican. Hall's counterpart in the Senate's 9th District, Democratic...

If you’re concerned about the future of the country and want to know if the next generation of Americans cares about pro-life issues, look no further than the state of West Virginia. There, pro-life 18-year-old Saira Blair, who graduated from high school in May and is now a college freshman, ran on a pro-life platform to beat an incumbent state legislator. Blair gives hope to pro-lifers wondering if teenagers really “get it” and want to make a difference for life. sairablair2“I think I’m fully capable of doing the job, and I don’t think it’s rocket science by any means —...

A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday. Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell won a hard-fought sixth term Tuesday, putting him a step closer to his lifelong dream of becoming majority leader and getting the GOP off to a good start in its goal of taking control of the Senate. Helping his chances was Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito's capture of the West Virginia seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Her victory, while not a surprise, gave Republicans the first of six new seats they will need to control the Senate for the first time in eight years...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Liberal MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams said the “old white people” in the South who vote Republican are “going to die someday” and hopefully usher in a new era of Democratic rule in the region. Host Krystal Ball, a former failed Democratic congressional candidate, asked Williams whether white Southerners should just be written off by the party, but Williams said never, saying that since they are “for people” and Republicans aren’t, they would eventually win the day. “Mitt Romney only won South Carolina with 53 [percent], John McCain with 52,” he said. “That’s a changing South. Those old white people? They’re...